Since its inception in 1975 Red Flag,
the giant air combat exercise held annually in the United States, has
tested participants to the limits. This year has been no exception; Typhoon, Voyager, Air Operations staff and, for the first time, Lightning have spent three weeks in Nevada honing their skills with American and Australian counterparts.

The training exercise was born from US Air Force (USAF) experiences
in the Vietnam War where statistics showed the survival rate for fast
jet aircrew improved significantly once they had flown 10 operational
missions. Through Red Flag the USAF sought to replicate real combat
conditions as closely as possible in order to improve survivability.

The breadth and scale of the exercise is breath-taking, it takes more
than an hour simply to launch the aircraft taking part in each of the
two daily training missions. But whilst this is no different to the
original exercises, the pace of progress is such that once airborne the
realism and complexity is unrecognisable even to those who participated
five years ago.

Air Vice-Marshal Ian Duguid

“Red Flag is one of the pinnacle exercises of the Royal Air Force calendar. Fundamentally it helps that we integrate with our American partners, the Royal Australian Air Force and our other coalition partners, so when we actually deploy on operations it’s not the first time that we’ll have worked with our partners in close proximity.”

“The Exercise builds incrementally” explained AVM Duguid. “The
first week is a little bit of crawl, then the second week a walk and
then finally into the last week which is very a much high threat
scenario. This has lots of complex operating environments, with
electronic warfare and electronic jamming which plays havoc with our
GPS.”

Group Captain Jim Beck

“This is my sixth Red Flag Red Flag and the bar has not only been raised a matter of inches, it’s feet higher now. This is now multi-domain which means we can really put the jets and our people through their paces.

“This is invaluable, there is nowhere else we can get this level of training, assessment and qualification of our tactics.”

RAF Coningsby
based 41 TES are no strangers to the US, arriving at Nellis from
California where they conduct trials and development work on Typhoon.
Squadron Leader Andy Milikin said: “The training you get here is
really peerless. To be able to operate with the Voyager, with F35 and
the deployed support unit brings us together in a way that you cannot do
when you’re at your own base in the UK. Coming to Nellis to take part
in Red Flag gives you the best real-world training without actually
going to war.”

He added, “We’ve got a huge expanse of airspace in which we can
fly. The threats which the Americans provide are highly realistic and
you really can’t go anywhere else in the world other than to come out to
Las Vegas to get this sort of training.”

The sole air-to-air refuelling aircraft on the exercise was a Voyager
KC3 operated by a crew drawn from both 10 and 101 Squadrons at RAF Brize Norton.
With a dozen Royal Australian Air Force Super Hornets and Growlers in
addition to the RAF Typhoons and Lightnings the RAF tanker was a popular
port of call throughout the exercise. The RAF also contributed
personnel to the Air operations Centre who provided mission planning in
support of the live fly exercise.

The conclusion of flying activity at Nellis heralds the next crucial phase of the exercise as AVM Duguid explained: “The
first thing we do when we return from an exercise or a deployment on
operations is to write a report. That covers everything from how we
learn lessons on how we looked after ourselves in terms of food and
accommodation and whether we had deployed at the right times to the
tactical and operational lessons we learned from the exercise.”

“The key lessons in particular are the ones that we really need
to close out and address before we then do subsequent deployments with
the same capabilities. Before Lightning deploys on HMS Queen Elizabeth
all of the hard and really important lessons that we learn from this
exercise will have been taken forward.”

In the weeks leading up to the three-week exercise over 250 tons of
equipment required to sustain and support the exercise arrived at Nellis
Air Force Base in Nevada via land, sea and air in a complex logistical
move.

Flight Lieutenant Tom Williams is the Detachment Logistics Officer. He said: “We
had a surge of Movements personnel at the beginning to set up the
exercise, taking delivery of over 50 ISO containers containing equipment
for the three aircraft types deployed and for 90 Signals Unit.

“Lightning and Voyager equipment had been shipped by sea from the
UK and then taken overland to Nellis, and the Typhoon equipment was
transported from China Lake in California. In addition, kit was
transported by air including an aircraft tow tractor and a 90 Signals
Unit Man SV Support Truck. There will be a further surge for the pack up
and recovery when the equipment and personnel return to the UK.”